A Wartime Hochzeitsausgabe With Documented Civic Provenance
The Hochzeitsausgabe — the so-called wedding edition of Mein Kampf — was a state-organized form of NS-era civic propaganda in which German and (after 1938) Austrian municipalities formally presented marrying couples with a copy of Hitler's autobiography in lieu of, or alongside, a civic congratulation. Presented copies typically bear the city's stamp and the personal signature of the mayor or registrar, turning ordinary trade printings into documented administrative artifacts of the Reich's marriage and population policy. Their value lies precisely in that paratext — town, office, hand — surviving on the volume itself.
The present copy is one such artifact: a 1942 wartime printing from Verlag Franz Eher Nachfolger, the NSDAP's central publishing house, in the standard half-leather Hochzeitsausgabe binding (approx. 7½ × 5 in., 781+ pp., ca. 1.4 lbs). It was presented by the City of Liezen — at that time within the Reichsgau Steiermark of Greater Germany, today the seat of Bezirk Liezen in the Austrian Bundesland Steiermark — and is signed by its mayor. Externally good with mild traces of use and age; internally very good, complete and tight, with foxing to the fore edge and endpapers consistent with its date. Offered as a primary source for research and archival study.
Bibliographic Record
- Title
- Mein Kampf — Hochzeitsausgabe (Wedding-Presentation Edition); volumes I and II issued in one binding
- Author
- Adolf Hitler (1889–1945)
- Publisher
- Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Franz Eher Nachfolger, Munich
- Year
- 1942 (wartime printing)
- Edition
- Hochzeitsausgabe — civic wedding-presentation issue, presented by the City of Liezen
- Language
- German (original)
- Collation
- 781+ pp.; volumes I and II in one binding (volume I: 12 chapters, volume II: 15 chapters)
- Binding
- Hardcover, half-leather over boards
- Dimensions
- ca. 7½ × 5 in. (ca. 19 × 13 cm)
- Weight
- ca. 1.4 lbs (ca. 635 g)
- Condition
- Externally good, internally very good. Mild traces of use and age. Foxing to the fore edge and to the endpapers. Pagination complete; binding firm and tight throughout.
- Provenance
- Wedding-presentation copy from the City of Liezen (Reichsgau Steiermark, 1938–1945; today Bezirk Liezen, Steiermark, Austria), signed by the mayor.
Selected Views
Research Context
The Hochzeitsausgabe is a discrete object class within the wider corpus of Mein Kampf imprints, distinct from the trade editions, the Volksausgabe, the Feldpostausgabe, and the various commemorative and jubilee bindings. Its significance lies less in the printed text — substantively unchanged from earlier issues — than in the way it documents the day-to-day administration of National Socialist marriage, family, and population policy. From the mid-1930s onward, registrars in many municipalities were directed to hand a copy to every newly married couple as a gift of the city; the practice was extended to annexed Austria after 1938 and continued, in adapted wartime materials, into the early 1940s.
An ordinary civil-registry act — a marriage — was made, through this object, an instrument of state ideology: materialized in half leather, signed by the mayor, and carried back into a private household.
The present volume preserves that documentary chain intact: identifiable place (Liezen), identifiable office (the mayor's), identifiable date layer (1942 wartime printing), and the physical signs of household use that came afterward. It is therefore primary-source material for several converging fields — local NS-era administrative history, the history of marriage and family policy in the Reich, the history of the book as an instrument of state propaganda, and the social and material history of Steiermark and Austria under Anschluss and occupation.
Appropriate Use
This copy is offered exclusively for purposes that fall within § 86 (3) StGB and comparable provisions, including:
- academic research on National Socialism, the Third Reich, antisemitism, and political violence;
- research on the history of the book and on state-organized propaganda as a material practice;
- research on NS-era marriage, family, registry, and population policy;
- regional and local history of Steiermark and the former Reichsgau Steiermark;
- university teaching with primary sources, including seminars on historiography and source criticism;
- museum, memorial-site, and archival accessioning, cataloguing, exhibition, and preservation;
- documentary, journalistic, and editorial work on the period and its afterlives.
It is not offered for ideological, celebratory, or decorative use, and it is not offered for reproduction, reprinting, or any form of republication. By completing an order, every buyer — institutional or individual — accepts these conditions of use together with the seller's Terms & Conditions.
Legal & Ethical Framework
Under German law, distribution of propaganda materials of unconstitutional organizations is regulated by §§ 86, 86a StGB. Section 86 (3) StGB — the so-called Sozialadäquanzklausel — expressly exempts conduct serving "civic enlightenment, the defense against unconstitutional endeavors, art or science, research or teaching, reporting on contemporary events or history, or similar purposes." The jurisprudence of the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has consistently affirmed that original historical imprints supplied for research, archival, educational, and museum purposes fall within this clause.
Shipment and buyer vetting are handled in line with that framework. Placing an order constitutes the buyer's binding acceptance of the seller's conditions of sale — including confirmation that the acquisition serves research, educational, documentary, archival, or scholarly purposes in the sense of § 86 Abs. 3 StGB and comparable provisions (e.g., Austria's Verbotsgesetz 1947). Individual scholars and private researchers are expressly included alongside institutional buyers. The seller reserves the right to decline any order that does not meet these criteria.